Lost In Space: 8 Biggest Space Misfires of 2010

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While 2010 saw many historic successes in spaceflight and space
science, plenty of things went wrong, too.

For example, several rockets failed to deliver their scientific
payloads, Japan's Venus probe Akatsuki missed the planet
entirely, and a NASA balloon crashed spectacularly in the
Australian desert, destroying its telescope payload and smashing
into a parked car.

Here's a rundown of 2010's space mishaps and - for one intrepid
Mars rover - a stationary fate:

8. Rocket launch failures

2010 saw many failures in the launch and deployment of payloads,
and the problems had a real international flavor.

On Dec. 5, for example, an overfueled Russian-built Proton rocket
failed to put three new Glonass-M navigation satellites into
orbit; they crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. India had
troubles of its own, with
back-to-back failures of its Geosynchronous Satellite Launch
Vehicle, in April and on Christmas Day.

In late October, the European communications satellite Eutelsat
W3B launched cleanly and made it to orbit. But the satellites
fuel tank developed a sizable leak, and engineers soon declared
the craft a total loss.

The United States had some problems, too. In April, the Pentagon
lost contact with a hypersonic glider test vehicle shortly after
launch. And NASA's prototype solar-sail satellite, NanoSail-D,
apparently failed to eject from its mothership satellite as
planned in early December.

7. NASA balloon wipes out SUV

In a highly visible blunder, a huge NASA
balloon crashed in central Australia before it could lift a
$2 million telescope to its high-altitude observation station.

On April 29, the 400-foot (121-meter) balloon carrying the
Nuclear Compton Telescope, a gamma-ray instrument, blew sideways
instead of lifting up. A NASA investigation later cited human
complacency as the accident's cause.

The pricey payload dragged along the ground. It disintegrated
spectacularly and smashed through a fence, narrowly missing
several spectators and heavily damaging a private vehicle parked
nearby. A YouTube video of the mishap drew over 160,000 views.

6. Zombie satellite is born

On April 5, the Intelsat Galaxy 15 communications satellite
started acting like a juvenile delinquent it stopped responding
to commands and started wandering out of its assigned orbit,
threatening other satellites. The satellite may have been knocked
out of commission by a massive solar eruption, according to its
manufacturer, Orbital Sciences Corp. of Virginia.

Strangely, the C-band telecommunications payload aboard the
satellite kept working, transmitting signals that threatened to
interfere with those of nearby satellites.

However, this story has a happy ending: On Dec. 23, Galaxy 15's
onboard battery became drained of all power, and the
satellite automatically reset itself as it was designed to do.
Zombiesat no more!

5. Mars rover stops roving, goes silent

In January, NASA engineers consigned the Mars rover Spirit to a
fate
stuck in deep Martian sand.The rover, which had rolled for
six years over the Red Planet's surface, became mired in a
location called Troy in May 2009. Spirit's controllers prepared
the vehicle to weather another harsh Martian winter, but it went
into hibernation March 22 and has
not responded to signals since.

Mission scientists still hold out hope that Spirit may come back
to life in March 2011, when sunlight to power its solar arrays
will shine strongest on Mars. But while it remains unresponsive
today, Spirit can hardly be considered a failure. The rover and
its twin, Opportunity, far outlasted their original 90-day
missions. And Opportunity is still going strong.

On July 31, an ammonia coolant pump on the International Space
Station failed, knocking out half of the station's cooling
system. Astronauts were forced to halt some experiments, and turn
off some systems and leave others without backups, to keep the
station from overheating.

The problem turned out to be a major technical malfunction, but
not a catastrophe. At the time, NASA called it the one of the
most challenging repairs for the International Space Station
ever attempted.

Astronauts fixed things during three separate spacewalks,
removing the faulty pump and replacing it with one of four spares
stored on the station's exterior. By Aug. 17, the crew had begun
reactivating some of the systems and bringing the station back up
to normal operations.

3. NASAs space exploration plan meets backlash

In 2010, President Obama's
new vision for NASA called for the space agency to abandon
its moon-oriented Constellation program and focus on getting
humans to an asteroid by 2025, and to Mars by the mid-2030s.

The plan also relies on foreign spacecraft to resupply the space
station shortly after NASA's space shuttle program retires in
2011. The longer-term goal is to encourage the development of
American commercial space capabilities, allowing private
companies to eventually shoulder much of the load.

While many have lauded NASA's new direction, others have assailed
it on several fronts. Some, for instance, don't want to see
Constellation get the ax. In late December, the House of
Representatives passed a short-term appropriations bill,
H.R. 3082, prohibiting NASA from initiating new programs and
requiring the agency to continue funding Constellation.

Some lawmakers are also upset about the looming reliance on
foreign spacecraft. And some congressmen as well as seasoned NASA
astronauts such as Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan and Jim Lovell
have publicly stated that they have safety concerns about NASA's
future reliance on private spaceships.

2. Shuttle Discovery runs into delays

2010 was a frustrating year for the space shuttle Discovery.

It was slated to make its last-ever flight in November, to
deliver a storage room and a humanoid robot called Robonaut 2 to
the space station. However, engineers
discovered cracks in parts of the shuttle's external fuel
tank shortly before launch. While they investigated the cause of
the cracks, they pushed Discovery's launch back, first to
December and then to early next year.

As it stands, Discovery will launch no earlier than Feb. 3, 2011.
The latest inspection of the shuttle has revealed a new set of
cracks on the external tank which NASA is now analyzing as
well, the pace agency announced Thursday (Dec. 30).

1. Japan probe misses Venus entirely

In the saddest space misfire of 2010, the Akatsuki probe failed
in its mission to enter Venus orbit. After more than six months
of interplanetary travel, the $300 million Japanese spacecraft
which was to study Venus' atmosphere and weather in unprecedented
detail
sailed past the planet on the night of Dec. 6.

Akatsuki's thrusters were supposed to fire for 12 minutes to slow
the craft down enough for Venus' gravity to snag it. But an
investigation determined that an unexpected pressure drop in the
spacecraft's fuel line caused the engines to conk out after only
2.5 minutes.

Akatsuki's failure made Japan 0-for-2 in interplanetary missions;
its only previous effort, the Nozomi mission to Mars, was
declared a loss in 2003.

Akatsuki is now in orbit around the sun. Mission scientists plan
to try another orbital insertion when the probe gets close enough
to Venus again likely sometime between November 2016 and January
2017.